South Corfu Municipality sends extrajudicial document to contractor to collect rubbish from roads
CORFU. 300 tons of rubbish on the streets - The company has different data that the cleaning services.
The rubbish will remain - who knows for how long - on the streets of South Corfu, with the dispute between the municipality and the contractor who carries out the transportation heading towards the courts.
The collection has stopped for some days now, while the South Corfu Mayor Kostas Lessis told the residents on Sunday not to put their rubbish in the bins, claiming that this is due to "the company's inability". According to the cleaning services' data, the contractor has transported fewer tons than the 19,900 tons provided for in the contract, meaning that 2,687 tons of waste still remain to be loaded and transported.
The company Recycling Works IKE said that the Municipality made defamatory allegations against it and reserves all its legal rights.
Speaking to Enimerosi, the representative of the company Giorgos Lavranos said that the data available show that not only have they have reached that number, but they have even exceeded it by 500 tons. "We have the numbers of the Palairos landfill in our hands that prove it."
"The Corfu Recyclable Materials Collection Centre (KDΑΥ) operates smoothly and seamlessly 6 days a week. It has no problems and serves the North and Central Corfu Municipalities, as well as the Paxos Municipality.
Our contract expired on 26 October 2023 due to reaching the contracted amount of Urban Solid Waste. For this reason, on 20 October 2023 our company sent an extrajudicial document-invitation to the South Corfu Municipality, informing it that the contractual tons to be transported will be exhausted within the next 15 days.
Consequently, our company has completed its work and the South Corfu Municipality has already awarded, following a tender, the transportation work to another contractor."
300 tons on the roads
According to Deputy Mayor for Cleaning Services Nikos Bogdos' estimate, the roads must have collected a total of 300 tons of waste, mixed, bulky and organic.
"The Mayor has committed and has proven that until the last day of his term of office he will do everything he can for the issue of waste," he told Enimerosi. "At the moment, the few waste collection trucks available to the Municipality are full and since our contractor is not available, we can't even empty them.
At the end of February, two large waste collection trucks are expected for recycling from the Philodimos programme and I hope that the new Mayor, Vassilis Himariotis, will deal with the issue in the best possible way."
Extrajudicial document
"We are waiting. The Mayor sent today an extrajudicial document to the Prosecutor, asking that the request of the Cleaning Service be granted and that the contracting of the project continue until it is completed. We have also invited the new temporary contractor to come in by Friday to sign the next contract. Once they submit the letter of guarantee and sign, they are required to start work within three days."
"Unfortunately, these are the results we Corfiots are paying for, since it has not yet been possible to build the Integrated Waste Management Facility and we depend on the contractors," added Nikos Bogdos.
Photo: Enimerosi archive
CHRISTINA GEREKOU
